Soon after the elections, the mega-corporation K12 convened a conference call with investors to boast about the opening of new markets for virtual charters in Georgia and Washington State.

K12 is the company founded by the Milken brothers to sell online schooling for-profit.

It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Its CEO, Ron Packard, has a background at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. Last year, he was paid $5 million.

The academic results of its schools are poor. The National Education Policy Center reviewed K12 and found that its students fare poorly in relation to test scores and graduation rates. The NCAA won’t accept credits from one of its online schools. The New York Times wrote a blistering critique of K12.

But K12, like some other charter operators, makes campaign contributions (as it did in Georgia), and the politicians care more about those contributions than about the children of their state.

WA State has already had issues with k12.com in regards to online schooling. Shortly after 3 legislators paved the way for outside companies to run online schools in Washington (via a Washington school district), those same 3 legislators resigned and started working for those companies.

Ms. Ravitch, sorry that school choice does not fit in your secular progressive agenda. How many of the teachers on this site flocked to the Marxist conference at Northwestern University? That was the place for teachers’ unions getting seminars. Chicago teachers’ strike was praised by Marxixts, as they were praised by Ravitch and other teachers’ union appologists.

Thus the reactionary response of conservatives and parents who want a better education for their kids, in which they aren’t molded into little socialists with failing scores.

Lyn, Why did,’t these millionaires open their own PRIVATE schools if they care so much? We have innovation here in WA that is now underfunded but will be even worse because of these vulture capitalists skimming from the top. Just look for a simple library in a charter school. Look for art supplies in the “arts enhancement” charter of NY. Look at the inexperienced “teachers” who will work for less pay for 80 hours per week. Look at Delhi where they force pregnancy test girls, kicking out pregnant teens. This is no different than the way these capitalists run their companies, for profit above all else. You are right. Parents can do better, conservatives too. For the record, I have no problem funding public education, but not for private gain.

This is something I asked over and over during the charter debates in Washington state where I live. How will you keep lobbyists from changing the law? The charter advocates assured everyone that they knew how to write the best possible law because they’d studied the experience of 41 other states (raising the question of why we oughtn’t wait longer for even more information), but could say nothing about how they’d keep that “best possible” law from being altered by well-funded special interests – or just by a caucus of knuckle-dragging ideologues.

I wonder if they even care. Given what I’ve learned about these people over the last several years of hand-to-hand combat, I doubt it.

Diane I would love to discuss what k12’s manipulative tactics and little they are for their students. This case spurred a federal criminal probe. The trial lasted for six weeks and just went to the jury.
k12 Inc was let off the hook and I know why.